Crawfish Parmesean

[rhines81]

I thought this site had a separate recipe thread but I did not see it... I won the local 'Mardi Gras' appetizer contest last week with an adapted Italian fried rice ball recipe that I would like to share. I'll simplify it here and leave out the fine details.

First I found a local source of cooked Louisiana crawfish (about 6 pounds in total with head and shell which yielded a little more than 1 - 1-1/2 pound of meat (with fat)). I picked all of those which took about 90 minutes. After shelling, chop the tail meat with fat in a food processor.

With the shells make yourself a yummy crawfish stock soup as follows:
I used 1/2 yellow onion, 2 carrots, 2 celery stalks and the discarded heads and shells from about 2 pounds of the cooked crawfish and added water to make about 5 quarts of stock. Boiled for 90 minutes and strained. You only need about 4-5 cups for the recipe. Set aside for later.

In a large skillet, sautee the Trinity (1 small onion, 1 large bell pepper and a stalk of celery - all finely chopped) with 2 TBSP of unsalted butter. Throw in 1-1/2 cups of short-grained rice (I used Arborio) and a 1/2 cup of dry white wine. Sautee and stir until it is mostly evaporated and then start adding in the crawfish stock 1/2 cup at a time and repeat the evaporation 1/2 cup of stock at a time until the rice is fully cooked (total about 20-30 minutes depending on temperature and type of rice). It may take up to 5 cups of the crawfish stock before the rice fully absorbs and is cooked. The rice should be tender yet firm at the end of cooking and the mixture creamy.

Once the rice is done, stir in another 4 TBSP of unsalted butter, 1/2 cup of grated Parmesan cheese and 1-1/2 TSP of Old Bay. Let mixture cool.
Once the Risotto mixture is cooled, add the crawfish meat, 1 cup of Panko bread crumbs, another cup of grated Parmesan cheese and 4 beaten eggs. Mix well.

Using approximately a heaping tablespoon of mixture, roll into balls (this recipe will yield about 70 1 to 1-1/2" balls). Dredge the balls into more Panko bread crumbs and fry in oil until golden brown. You will probably use an additional 2-3 cups of Panko during this process.
ENJOY!